Re: Chess symbol rotations (revisited)

From: Garth Wallace <gwalla_at_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2015 17:21:40 -0700

On Monday, April 13, 2015, Hans Aberg <haberg-1_at_telia.com> wrote:

>
> > On 13 Apr 2015, at 23:18, Garth Wallace <gwalla_at_gmail.com <javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> >
> > I'm much further along on my research for a proposal to encode
> > heterodox chess symbols. I asked about terms for rotations last
> > November and was told that the terms in use in the standard are
> > CLOCKWISE-ROTATED and ANTICLOCKWISE-ROTATED (e.g. U+29BC), but I
> > wasn't sure I would be proposing the knights in intermediate 45 degree
> > rotations. Now I believe I have sufficient evidence for their use in
> > running text, which brings up the question of how to name them. In my
> > current draft I'm using terms like BLACK 45 DEGREE CLOCKWISE-ROTATED
> > CHESS KNIGHT and WHITE 135 DEGREE ANTICLOCKWISE-ROTATED CHESS KNIGHT
> > for them. It seems awkward, but I can't think of any better naming
> > convention.
>
> Have you checked if they are here:
>
> http://www.chessvariants.org/index/mainquery.php?type=Piececlopedia&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1&usethisheading=Piececlopedia
>
> (Oops, meant to reply to the list)

The Piececlopedia doesn't really address symbols directly, it
describes pieces by their moves. Rotated chess piece symbols are used as
placeholders, with their actual identities as pieces assigned on
a problem-by-problem basis (only the 180 degree turned queen and knight are
fixed by convention, to the grasshopper and nightrider). Think variables,
rather than constants. So, for example, in one problem a knight turned 90
degrees clockwise may be a camel (1,3 leaper), in
another problem a mao (xiangqi horse), and still another problem may use a
knight turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise for the camel instead. Without
context, it means "a knight-like piece of some variety, but not an actual
knight". This is long-standing practice in fairy chess problems.
Received on Mon Apr 13 2015 - 19:22:46 CDT

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